The Devil You Know

Action guy Nick Kismet
takes on...

The Devil You Know

An 8-Chapter Turbo-Charged Takedown!

What Has Gone Before: The lady journalist, Tecla, met Kismet on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. She was looking for information regarding the secret society Prometheus when they were attacked and she was kidnapped by highly trained goons in helicopters. Trying to rescue her, Kismet fought his way aboard one helicopter, disabling the pilot only to realize, high over the streets of New York City, he has never flown a helicopter before!

******

Episode 4:
Chopper Down

HE KNEW THE CONTROLS: the collective changed the pitch of the rotor blades to adjust lift; the cyclic tilted the rotor assembly to bank the aircraft in any direction, or to simply hover; and the foot pedals controlled the rudder. Book knowledge was no substitute for experience, but at least out here in the open air above the river, there was a lot of room for him to get a feel for the unfamiliar systems. At first, his maneuvers were sloppy and erratic, but he quickly learned where only a feather touch was needed and which controls required constant attention.

The other two JetRangers had regrouped and were continuing on toward the Brooklyn shore. Kismet hastened to bring his commandeered aircraft back into the formation. Hopefully, the other pilots had no idea that the enemy was in their midst, but Kismet hadn’t yet decided how to best exploit that advantage. For now, he just wanted to keep them in sight, especially the one transporting Tecla.

The momentary respite from physical activity afforded him a chance to contemplate the events of the evening. While he had no reason to question his original conclusion, namely that his old nemesis Prometheus had emerged from shadows like Leviathan from the sea, there were a few niggling details that he couldn’t quite fit into the equation.

He glanced at the unmoving form of the pilot and noted the man’s olive complexion and coarse black hair. Every man involved in the operation, at least those he had actually seen, seemed to share a common racial background, but he couldn’t put his finger on their shared ethnicity; it had been impossible to discern an accent from the few words he had heard the pilot shout. He stored the information in his memory bank and moved on.

The Skorpion pistols, originally manufactured in the Soviet satellite nation of Czechoslovakia, had been widely distributed among Communist-bloc armies, and subsequent to the fall of the Iron Curtain, had become very popular on the black market. Its compact design made it a favorite with urban terrorist cells. He thought back to his singular encounter with the group he had since thought of as Prometheus. Those men had also been well-trained commandos, but had gone to great lengths to conceal their faces.

Only their leader had revealed his face — a man with fair hair and skin, and a German name. The weapons they had employed had been top of the line, not old Soviet surplus. The discrepancies weren’t overwhelming to be sure, but there was a more troubling question that lent significance to those disparate scraps of information.

What did they want with Tecla Masciarelli?

The formation had been steadily descending as it moved across the river, so that now the helicopters were only about two hundred feet above the water. On the Brooklyn shore, Kismet could make out the industrial environs of the old naval yard; a maze of warehouses and cranes that had once upon a time been the foremost construction facility for American warships, but was now a private concern. As the approach continued, he saw a cluster of black vans ringing an open space on a large wooden pier, an area just large enough for three helicopters to land.

He stared intently at the tableau, searching for some way to take control of the situation. He did not doubt that Tecla’s abductors would have reinforcements waiting in those vans, further stacking the odds against him. If he was going to have a chance at rescuing her, he would have to force that helicopter to land somewhere else.
But how do you force a helicopter down? He saw the answer almost as soon as the thought formed, and groaned. But he had already used up more lives than a cat since meeting Tecla; what was one more?

He pushed the cyclic forward, accelerating the helicopter until he was practically kissing the tail rotor of the lead aircraft, the one with Tecla. It was impossible to see the blades as they knifed through the air, providing lateral stability to counteract the torque generated by the main rotor, but they were there nonetheless. He held that distance for a moment, steeling himself against what he was about to do. If the pilot at the head of the formation knew that Kismet was in control of the helicopter that was sidling closer, he gave no indication; the JetRanger stayed on course, descending and decelerating steadily. Kismet matched his movements, then abruptly moved even closer, leading the target.

When the time came, he did not hesitate. He stomped one of the rudder pedals, and the helicopter pirouetted on its axis. The tail boom whipped around violently and the steering rotor of Kismet’s helicopter met the tail assembly of the lead chopper in a collision of metal. An awful shudder and a noise like a train wreck, rippled through both aircraft as the tail rotors annihilated each other in an explosion of shrapnel. The helicopter lurched, as if abruptly coming to a halt, then began to spin violently as torque from the main rotor whipped the fuselage in the opposite direction. For just an instant, Kismet saw the shattered remains of the lead helicopter’s tail boom began to whip sideways, then everything became a blur of motion.

He was ready for the loss of control and immediately increased both pitch and throttle, and then pushed forward on the cyclic. At first, his wounded aircraft corkscrewed through the air, dropping lower with each circuit. Then, as his airspeed grudgingly increased, the helicopter began to stabilize. At sixty knots, the wind of his passage through the air was enough to hold the airframe steady beneath the rotor, like a weather vane in a stiff breeze.

It took a moment longer for Kismet, still reeling from the dizzying spirals, to ascertain that the pilot of the other helicopter had emulated his movements and was currently charting almost the same course away from the naval yard, a northeast vector that had already passed the Williamsburg Bridge and would shortly take them into the borough of Queen's.

He eased off the cyclic just enough to let the other helicopter pull ahead. Although he had prevented the kidnappers from making their rendezvous, they were still calling the shots. Kismet would have to wait and see where the pilot decided to put down; only then would he have a chance at liberating Tecla. Admittedly, not a great chance, but maybe the only one she would get.

The pilot of the lead chopper wasted no time finding an open area to set down. Kismet saw, to his chagrin, that the new course was heading toward a rail bed where several lines from the Long Island Railroad formed a junction. It was one of the few areas in the massive New York transit network where the tracks did not run either on elevated platforms or through subterranean tunnels. While the area was clear of buildings, it was cris-crossed with a web of virtually invisible overhead power lines. While an expert pilot might be able to guide a disabled helicopter through the net, Kismet would be hard pressed to make any sort of landing. He racked his brain to remember the steps for a controlled crash.

The first JetRanger lined up on the rails as it descended, and when its landing assembly was almost kissing the tracks, the pilot pulled back on the cyclic. The fuselage immediately began to slough around, but an instant later the skids touched down. The helicopter started to whip around in a shower of sparks, but the friction of contact rapidly cancelled out the torque forces. After spinning three tight circles, the fuselage ground to a halt, while the main rotor began winding down.

Kismet knew he didn’t have a prayer of imitating the other pilot’s landing; he simply wasn’t familiar enough with the aircraft to achieve the sort of instantaneous response to the vagaries of an emergency descent. But like it or not, he had to put the stricken helicopter on the ground. He swooped down toward the rails, threading between the power lines, and when he thought he was low enough, straightened the stick and throttled off.

The helicopter instantly began to auto-rotate; the fuselage spun in the opposite direction of the rotor blades, reducing its lift to almost nothing. The airframe slammed into the tracks with a force that shook Kismet’s hands from the controls. The JetRanger’s forward momentum sent it like a runaway train toward the first aircraft, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then one of the rotor blades clipped the ground and all hell broke loose.

The JetRanger came apart, flinging parts in every direction, as it began rolling end over end down the tracks. Shattered fragments of the rotors slammed into the parked helicopter like guided missiles and knocked it on its side, triggering a similar catastrophe as that aircraft’s main rotor slammed into the ground, one vane at a time. An instant later, the two demolished aircraft embraced in a spectacular collision, throwing fragments of metal and plastic confetti in a lethal shower. A fifty meter section of the rail line was plowed up strewn with wreckage before the twisted ruin finally came to rest.

At the heart of the storm, Kismet had escaped injury from flying shrapnel, but was nevertheless disoriented from the centrifugal and kinetic forces generated by the crash landing. Even after physical motion had ceased, everything in his world continued spinning for several seconds. When he was certain that he had suffered no mortal injury, he gingerly extricated himself from the wreckage. As soon as his legs were free of the crumpled cockpit panels, he dropped from his seat and spilled onto the debris strewn ground. Until his fall, he had not even realized that the wreck had left him hanging upside down.

After finally wrestling free of his neck tie and the rope to which it was anchored, he cautiously approached the ruins of the second helicopter. An oily smell pervaded the air and a plume of smoke was rising from engine cowling. It had not been his intention to demolish the aircraft and as the scope of the devastation hit him, he felt a pang of guilt; in attempting to save Tecla, he might very well have killed her. A stream of blood trickled from beneath the twisted sculpture of destruction; a long shard of metal, probably one of the rotor blades from Kismet’s chopper, had spitted the fuselage. With growing dread, he began tearing at the panels and like a grim surgeon, exposed the gory mess within.

Despite the carnage, he experienced a moment of relief. The barely recognizable form impaled on the rotor vane wore high-top basketball shoes, not stiletto heels. The next human form he encountered, though bruised and unmoving, was still alive but it wasn’t Tecla; he kept digging. Deep within the shattered airframe, his hands closed on a piece of aluminum tubing, and when he pulled it free, he saw her.

Tecla was still unconscious and still secured within the Stokes litter. Although her expensive suit was stained with blood and grease, she appeared to be uninjured; her impromptu cage had afforded her an additional level of protection during the crash, and the sedative in her bloodstream had relaxed her muscles, further sparing her from injury.

Kismet loosened the straps and pulled her away from the smoldering wreck. Once in the clear, he slipped an arm under her knees and lifted her off the ground. She wasn’t heavy – with a fashion model’s physique, she probably weighed fifty kilograms soaking wet – but Kismet’s muscles were exhausted beyond fatigue. His legs felt like lead, and although he was trying to run from the scene of the dual aircraft collision, he appeared to merely stagger.

Sirens were audible in the distance, but the familiar thump of rotor blades gradually drowned out the shrill noise of approaching emergency vehicles. The third helicopter was on its way, and Kismet knew his enemies would arrive before the police. He had to get Tecla away from the train line, away from anywhere her kidnappers might think to look, but every step was an ordeal.

Suddenly there was a figure standing directly in his path. Kismet fell to his knees and croaked: “Help me!” But even as the words escaped his lips, he knew that this shadowy presence was not there to offer aid.

******

He wore the cassock of a monk, with a cowl that completely hid his face. In different circumstances, Kismet would have thought the costume ostentatious, even laughable, but there was something strangely authentic – and deeply malefic – about the vestments.

As the figure began to approach, Kismet noticed a length of black rope tied around his waist like a sash, and depending from one of the ends was a crucifix of carved wood, but for some reason, the short end of the vertical post was pointing toward the ground; the cross was inverted.

Kismet’s blood ran cold. He tried to get up, to lift Tecla and resume their flight to freedom, but she had grown impossibly heavy. The dark monk glided closer, as if his unseen feet were floating above the ground. Kismet laid his charge aside, as gently as possible, then struggled to his feet.

He’s just a man; just an ordinary flesh and blood human, who happens to believe that he’s got help from below. Well, I know better.

He struck a fighter’s stance and waited for the malevolent figure to get within range. Although the man was almost within reach, his face remained a blank shadow beneath his hood, the same lightless hue as the cord around his waist. Kismet took a swing. A robed arm shot out to block the punch, and as the gnarled fingers brushed Kismet’s hand aside, the latter felt something like an electrical shock course through his entire body.

When he raised his head a moment later, he found that he had been knocked backwards, nearly five meters. In the periphery of his vision, he saw a pair of figures – two of the men that had first kidnapped Tecla – approaching her motionless form, but then his attention was consumed by the baleful entity steadily advancing toward him. Before he could rise or retreat, his foe was upon him.

Frail ancient fingers, but impossibly strong, closed around his throat and began to squeeze. Kismet fought the killing grip, then directed impotent blows against the monk’s head and body, all to no avail. He caught a glimpse of Tecla, dragged by her captors back to the surviving helicopter, then his world was consumed by darkness... except for a single piercing beam of light, shining like the sun, and drawing him closer.

Then the dark monk was gone.

Nick Kismet lay spread-eagled across the parallel tracks of the Long Island Railroad, illuminated by the headlights of an onrushing train...

Back to Episode 3 :A Long Drop
On to Episode 5 :The Judas Rope

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The Devil You Know and the character of Nick Kismet are copyright by Sean Ellis. It may not be copied without permission of the author except for purposes of reviews. (Though you can print it out to read it, natch.)